If you landed here, you probably know that there are many B2B lead generation strategies in B2B. Whether you’re trying LinkedIn outreach, emails, or ads, marketing and sales teams are always looking for new ways and strategies to attract more and more customers.
What are B2B lead generation strategies? Why should you consider them for your business? What are the different strategies available and how to implement them correctly to generate more B2B leads?
At LaGrowthMachine, we see hundreds of leads generated by our clients every day. Based on our experience, we will review our picks for the 10 best B2B lead generation strategies. Each strategy has been proven, so you can implement them with confidence in your communication plan.
What is a B2B Lead Generation Strategy?
Let’s start with a definition.
In B2B, lead generation is a marketing concept that aims to attract and qualify leads – also called prospects – for a company’s products or services.
Therefore, the main goal of lead generation is to create a system that captures potential customer information and begins to build a relationship between the lead you are targeting and your company, from brand discovery to the purchase act.
Nowadays, lead generation can be done in many ways, especially in B2B. This is what we will look at further in this post.
Why is it important to develop a B2B Lead Generation Strategy?
As we saw above, B2B lead generation is the process of increasing your number of prospects, customers, and revenue.
If you don’t invest in lead generation strategies, you’re missing out on many customers!
Moreover, a B2B lead generation strategy can help you achieve other goals, such as:
- Develop brand awareness: brand awareness will allow more and more people to talk about your company’s excellence, and spread the word, which will bring in more leads later on.
- Improve the quality of your customer relationship: with a good lead generation strategy, you will be able to focus on your best leads and build deeper relationships with them, which can turn into long-term relationships and be much more profitable.
- Reduce acquisition costs: with the help of a B2B lead generation strategy, you will be able to reduce acquisition costs by attracting more high-quality leads that convert and become customers.
- Boost sales figures and revenue: as we saw earlier, a B2B lead equals a potential customer equals money.
For these reasons, lead generation is essential in B2B for growing a sustainable business.
Let’s now move on to the different B2B lead generation strategies that can help you get more prospects.
The 10 Best B2B Lead Generation Strategies and B2B Prospecting Ideas
There are more than 10 strategies for generating B2B leads.
However, we are convinced that the ones we will review below are those that will give you the best results in B2B:
1) Use a sales automation tool
2) Publish content on LinkedIn
3) Use SEA
4) Use retargeting ads
5) Host B2B webinars
6) Personalized emails
7) LinkedIn outreach
8) Using SEO
9) Cold calling
10) Using lead magnets
Let’s review
At LaGrowthMachine, we use some of these tools to generate our own leads, but also as exclusive features of our sales automation tool. By using them, our clients are able to generate 3.5 times more B2B leads than before.
Strategy 1: Use a Sales Automation Tool
Depending on your budget, this lead generation strategy might not be the cheapest. However, it could be the best!
Depending on the solution, a sales automation tool like LaGrowthMachine will help you to:
- Automate repetitive tasks to focus on your strategy;
- Find new potential clients through different data sources;
- Automatically retrieve additional prospect data;
- Perform multichannel prospecting (LinkedIn prospecting + email prospecting for example);
- Get a correct view of your sales funnel and your performance.
To summarize, using a sales automation tool will save you a lot of time and allow you to get many more prospects.
You can even plug some sales automation tools into your existing processes and tools, such as CRM and others. This is the case for LaGrowthMachine.
Strategy 2: Publish Content on LinkedIn
Posting content on LinkedIn is one of the most famous and cheapest strategies to generate B2B leads.
It consists of posting content that will reach your target audience via LinkedIn. Over time, if you do it the right way, more and more people will be able to see your content, which means many more prospects will naturally come to you.
The only downside to this tactic is that it takes some time, as you need to think about your topic and write about it.
How to do it effectively?
First, you need to find your target audience. What kind of people do you want to reach? What content will interest them?
Then, you need to produce quality content that will be considered valuable by your target audience. This can be tips about your work, news about your ecosystem, social events, etc., as long as people like it!
Thirdly, share your content on LinkedIn through different groups and connections. You can even create a LinkedIn company page and post your content there as well!
The more people react to your post, the more LinkedIn will improve your reach. That’s why you need to make them react. To improve your engagement rate, you will need to add media, a CTA, or try other techniques. You can learn more about this in our LinkedIn post.
Finally, don’t forget to measure your results. How many prospects did you generate via LinkedIn last month? How much time did you spend on this task? What was your engagement rate?
Strategy 3: Use SEA (Search Engine Advertising)
Another B2B lead generation strategy is to use Google Ads, as it’s a pretty effective way to get new leads quickly.
Through Search Engine Advertising (SEA), you can create ads that will appear at the top of Google when people search for something related to your business.
For example, if you sell software to help landscapers manage their business, your ad might appear when someone searches for “landscaping software.”
It’s a quick and easy way to attract people directly from the web to the landing pages you’ve built for this purpose, and turn them into customers.
But depending on your industry, it can sometimes be very expensive.
At LaGrowthMachine, we use Google Ads in addition to the other strategies we will detail next.
Strategy 4: Use Retargeting Ads
Just like Google Ads, retargeting ads are a very effective strategy for getting B2B leads.
This is a tactic you’ll want to activate at the bottom of the funnel when your lead has already visited your website or interacted with one of your ads elsewhere, for example.
It’s a very effective closing method!
The principle is simple: when someone visits your website, they are “tagged” with a piece of code (a “cookie”). This allows you to show your ads to that person when they browse other websites.
For example, if you sell software to help landscapers manage their business, your ad might be shown on a website visited by landscapers.
By setting up retargeting ads, you can be sure that the people seeing your ads are interested in what you offer.
The best part about this lead generation tactic is that it allows you to remarket your website visitors without spending a lot of money.
You can also use Google Ads for retargeting purposes.
Strategy 5: Host B2B Webinars
Today, webinars are one of the most common lead generation strategies in B2B.
A webinar is a live event during which you present your product or service to a group of people who have registered in advance.
Webinars are usually done through conference calls or video conferencing software like Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, etc.
You can stream your webinar on LinkedIn Live, which makes it very interesting for an overall LinkedIn prospecting strategy.
They allow you to build trust with your audience and show them that you are an expert in your field.
It’s also a place and time to meet other professionals in your prospect industry, making it an interesting networking or learning opportunity.
People who attend your webinar are usually already interested in your topic, aware of what you sell, your brand, or know people working in your company, which makes it very high quality.
Strategy 6: Personalized Emails
Sending personalized emails is a relevant and effective lead generation automation strategy in B2B.
When we talk about personalized emails, we are not talking about automated “drip” campaigns that send the same message to everyone on your list.
We are talking about taking the time to write a personalized message for each prospect on your list.
When you send a personalized email, take the time to research your prospect. Find information that will make your message more relevant to them.
It’s a time-consuming strategy, but it’s very effective!
But hey, you know what? If you do it with LaGrowthMachine, it will take you about 1 hour to set up. Then, prospects will come directly to you. With our new Inbox feature, you can even reply to emails, follow up with a LinkedIn message directly within our tool!
Strategy 7: LinkedIn Outreach
LinkedIn is the biggest platform for B2B lead generation.
There are two ways to use LinkedIn for lead generation:
- Organic prospecting: this is about reaching your prospects organically, without using paid ads.
- Paid outreach: you use LinkedIn ads to target your ideal customer and send them to a landing page.
Both methods can be effective, but we will focus on organic prospecting in this article. When you do organic prospecting on LinkedIn, the first step is to find the right prospects. Use LinkedIn’s search bar and filters to find leads that match your ideal customer profile.
Once you have found good leads, it’s time to contact them! The best way to do this is to send a personal message.
To do this, you can do it manually, or automatically with LaGrowthMachine.
Strategy 8: Use SEO
SEO is about optimizing your website to rank better in search engine results pages (SERPs). This is different from SEA, which is about paying to rank better in SERPs.
SEO is a long-term strategy that is very effective for B2B lead generation.
One advantage of SEO is that it allows you to attract prospects who are already interested in what you offer. This is very, very high quality.
When someone searches for a keyword related to your product or service, and they find your website on the first page of Google, they are more likely to trust you and do business with you.
However, it is a complex and very long-term strategy. To implement an excellent SEO strategy, you will need to invest money in a qualified expert.
Strategy 9: Cold calling
Cold calling is a B2B lead generation strategy that involves calling people who have never heard of your company before.
It’s a bit of an old-school sales technique, but it still works well in some industries.
It’s a very direct way to generate leads. It can also be very effective if done correctly.
The key to cold calling is to have an excellent sales script.
Your script should be designed to qualify leads and book appointments.
It is also important to have a good prospect database. The best way to get a good database is to buy it from a reputable company.
Once you have your list and your script, you’re ready to start cold calling!
Strategy 10: Use Lead Magnets
One of the best B2B lead generation strategies is using a lead magnet. It’s an incentive you offer people in exchange for their contact information.
There are many formats for B2B lead magnets:
- Ebook;
- Whitepaper;
- Google Form;
- Guide;
- Template;
- Toolkit;
- Video training.
The most important thing is to make sure your lead magnet is relevant to your target market and that it’s something with a lot of added value.
To ensure your lead magnet is effective, you can do an A/B test.
Once you have a good lead magnet, the next step is to create a landing page or a popup to host it.
If you’re using a landing page, it should be designed to convert visitors into leads. It should be short, with a clear CTA and a form to capture leads.
If you’re using a popup, make sure it’s not too intrusive and that it appears at the right time. This could be, for example, after the visitor has been on your website for a few seconds.
Once you have your lead magnet and your landing page/popup, you need to promote it.
There are many ways to do this, but the most common is to use email marketing and social media.
You can also use paid ads. Make sure you target the right people, or you’ll end up wasting a lot of money.
Lead generation can be a complex and time-consuming process. However, it remains essential for any business that wants to grow.
There are many B2B lead generation strategies, and the ones we’ve covered in this article are just a few of the most effective.
The key is to find the right mix of B2B lead generation strategies that work for your business. You should always test and experiment to see what works best.